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New Scientist Live

Watch a swarm of 1000 mini-robots assemble into shapes

THE world’s largest robotic swarm has been created using an army of more than 1000 bots. By working together, they can autonomously form complex 2D shapes such as stars or letters of the alphabet.

The system, developed by Mike Rubenstein of Harvard University and his colleagues, uses simple robots called Kilobots. Each one has an onboard microcontroller, infrared sensors and transmitters for communication, and vibration motors that allow them to move. They flash their lights to tell how far they are from nearby bots by measuring light intensity.

To do the assembling, the desired end shape is transmitted to all the robots and then four of them are positioned by hand to mark the starting point. Successive robots shuffle along until they are close to a stationary robot and positioned within the designated shape. Each robot knows where it is by talking to the ones around it. It can take 12 hours for 1000 robots to fill in a pattern (Science, doi.org/t74).

Robot swarms could revolutionise construction by allowing structures to build themselves, says Roderich Gross at the University of Sheffield, UK. “The next challenge is to generate shapes in 3D and to deploy robot swarms in real world applications,” he says. Watch the swarm in action at bit.ly/swarmbot.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Army of bots swarms to create complex shapes”